AEA Papers and Proceedings
ISSN 2574-0768 (Print) | ISSN 2574-0776 (Online)
International Comparison of Physician Incomes
AEA Papers and Proceedings
(pp. 144–149)
Abstract
We compare physician incomes using tax data from the United States, Canada, Sweden, and the Netherlands. Physicians are concentrated in the top percentiles of the income distribution in all four countries, especially in the United States and certain specialties. Physician incomes are highest in the United States, and a decomposition shows that this mainly reflects differences in overall income distributions, rather than physicians' locations in those distributions. This suggests that broader labor market differences, and thus physicians' outside options, drive absolute incomes. Shifting US physicians' incomes to match relative positions in other countries' distributions would only marginally reduce health care spending.Citation
Buehler, Aidan, Joshua D. Gottlieb, Jeffrey Hicks, Lisa Laun, Mårten Palme, Maria Polyakova, Victoria Udalova, and Maria Ventura. 2026. "International Comparison of Physician Incomes." AEA Papers and Proceedings 116: 144–149. DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261073Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
- I11 Analysis of Health Care Markets
- J31 Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
- J44 Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing